Dulce Periculum
by summersaults16
Summary: What do you want from me?" Bella's voice was shaking but she would not leave without a fight. Edward stared hard at her, looking into her very soul. "It's pretty simple, really. So, I'll tell you your future," he paused. "But first, you must tell me mine." (Reimagined version of my Q & P entry for Halloween).


*** This is my Twilight reimagined version based on the story I wrote for the Harry Potter Quills and Parchment 2017 Halloween Fest. This story has no semblance to canon and deals with soul-selling, summoning the devil, the occult and witchcraft. (Human Bella/Devil Edward)**

 **ooOoo**

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick Tock.

"I am coming for you…" A voice hissed eerily, snake-like in its sibilance no human could ever produce. It was a foreign, unidentified language that had Bella tried to speak it, it would have fallen upon deaf ears. Cold sweat pooled on her forehead and her heart started racing frantically as if it would break free from her ribcage.

How could she manage to understand such a bizarre, complex way of speaking?

"Don't think about it," Bella quickly scolded herself.

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. The pendulum enclosed within the wooden case of the grandfather clock kept moving.

The phantom words continued to echo inside Bella's mind as though bees buzzed around, trapped and formed a chaotic frenzy.

No. It felt far more potent than just a few senseless insects. The carefully syllabicated tone slithered around her head like a vicious serpent taunting its prey.

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. The innocent ticking sound never felt so sinister in her entire life.

Bella could have sworn that damn thing was alive, as if it had a ticking heartbeat and the mechanical gears breathed while her terrified brown eyes watched them slide against each other.

"Don't even say it," she begged her own paranoid mind. Just once, she'd like to stop the cogs inside her brain from jumping to conclusions.

It started out as hushed whispers, tucked surreptitiously in the background of her thoughts. She barely took notice of it at first but as soon as the grandfather clock started chiming, the voices grew louder, more violent and more aggressive with each swing of the dial.

"I am coming…" it hissed again.

Bella tried to tune out the disembodied voice. "This is not real." She was raising both of her hands to cover her ears saying, "This is not real." She chanted over and over again like an ill-begotten prayer even if the conviction in her voice stated otherwise.

She recalled the horrific memory in her grandfather's distinctive voice, how adamant he believed that this would be his final hour – October 31, 2001: Halloween night.

What a terrible cliché.

During her spare time away from school and friends, Bella would read an assortment of books and surf the Internet for articles centering on Halloween. She was not one to believe in such superstitious nonsense.

This had been purely meant for research purposes due to her grandfather's negatively strong attachment to the public holiday, although her attempts of finding answers were left futile. She could not fathom how a silly pagan tradition would be the sole cause of Peter's demise.

The majority of her neighbors celebrated the occasion by hanging spooky decorations all over their houses; children in special costumes went out for a night of trick or treating; and people carved pumpkins into different kinds of jack 'o lanterns.

On the other hand, at this very night, most of her family members were at the hospital, cramped up together in a small, private room where her grandfather, Peter, was confined.

The family observed his strange behavior prior to his admission. He crossed each date of the year on the calendar using a red marker with trembling hands – a side effect of his arthritis. He did this every day for the rest of his life, counting the days one by one and of what little time he had left.

"It's so close, so very close," he would often say to no one in particular. All the while, his tired eyes remained transfixed on the grandfather clock in his study, watching as the pendulum continued to sway back and forth as if awaiting his doom.

Nobody in her family took his warnings very seriously back then. After all, he was diagnosed with dementia and sent to a geriatric mental institution, an action brought by his frequent outbursts about his foreseen death.

A pang of guilt surged through her heart when she remembered the day he was taken away into the facility. Peter did not fight off the medical staff who escorted him to the vehicle, but by the time he was leaving, she could never forget the shocked, regretful expression burned inside his irises when her grandfather caught her line of sight.

Bella felt incredibly awful. There was nothing she could do to help him. She was certain that the old man's deteriorating health was primarily because of her grandmother's passing earlier that same year; she could never have been more wrong.

 **ooOoo**

It was a quarter to midnight when her grandfather began having one of his episodes again.

"Let me speak to Bella!" Peter demanded.

"I need to talk to her alone!" he thrashed and yelled from his bed. "And don't you dare call a nurse on me after you lot sent me to this hellhole to rot!"

He was so obdurate with his demand to speak to his only grandchild in private that no one dared deny a dying man his last request.

With worried glances coming from Charlie and Renèe Swan, Bella ensured her parents that there was nothing to worry about. She would be fine. After all, he was her grandfather…right?

It was a sterile, white, four-walled room she stood in as her gaze landed on the hospital bed on which the aged man was lying. She carefully approached the cot, hesitant as his old, weary eyes continued to trail her movements. Bella heard his ragged breathing and she saw the excruciating pain it was causing him.

And at that moment, she knew that he was already dying.

It was just as her grandfather had predicted over and over again – the Halloween night of 2001.

The bone-chilling reminiscence felt alarmingly lucid as ever.

 _"Bella…" her grandfather croaked as he was lying on his deathbed. His coarse, raspy voice ended into a wheezed cough as he desperately tried to get the words out of his mouth before his body would permanently give up on him._

"I'm so s-sorry, darling," he sputtered as a few salty tears began to form at the corner of his eyes. "Please, please forgive me."

"Grandpa, I don't know what you're talking about." Bella's brows furrowed in confusion, watching as her grandfather tried to motion himself to a sitting position. She tried assisting the old man back into his hospital bed; however, he just stubbornly shook his head.

"You must know that I love you." Peter ignored her puzzled response. "You must remember that!" he pleaded incessantly and without much choice, Bella nodded immediately at his assertion.

"Day by day I thought of you. Oh, my poor grandchild… How could I –" He cried once more, heaving and panting in a distressed gesture. "I tried to stop him, I really did! But I-I just couldn't do it! T-that monster!" Peter added while the cardiac monitor attached to his chest began beeping wildly, his heart rate and breathing continuing to rise.

"Calm down, Grandpa." Bella was already feeling a little bit anxious given his unusual reaction. "I'll go and fetch the nurse, it's not good to have you all worked up." She reached up to press the buzzer adjacent to her grandfather's bed. He must be having some sort of fit, she assumed.

His aged, withered hand firmly grasped her wrist before her fingers could press the button. A grave expression was written all over her grandfather's face.

He gazed intently into her wide, fearful eyes. "He's coming for you."

 **ooOoo**

At exactly 11:59 PM, only a minute to midnight on a Halloween night, Peter Swan passed away.

Bella recalled the incident with crystal clarity. The sound of a cardiac monitor switching to a flat line; hospital personnel rushing inside the room when the alarm was triggered, soon followed by her frenetic parents.

Bella did not even flinch when the staff nurses began shoving past her as they flocked Peter's bed. She just stared blankly at the unresponsive frame of her dead grandfather while he was being resuscitated by a team of medical practitioners in a desperate effort to revive him.

It was just as he had always predicted. How ironic to think that even if he was merely a few seconds from death, he left one last prediction. No – one final warning.

Someone was out to get her and the old geezer did not even tell her what to do.

The tall antique clock chimed loudly, its hands moved slowly towards the hour. A second felt like a minute. A minute felt like thirty. An hour felt like an eternity.

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.

"Watch the clock," Bella commanded herself, although it was barely above a whisper. "Don't ever look away."

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.

"Count the seconds." Her frightened brown eyes remained fixed on the dial and she swallowed roughly. "Until… until you no longer have to stay."

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.

The grandfather clock kept chiming as if it was already in celebration of her looming fate, a chorus of bells dramatically enumerating each hour of the day. The sound vibrated over and over again, snapping Bella out of her long trance.

How long had she zoned out? Seconds? Minutes? Hours? Waiting for the inevitable arrival felt like agonizing days.

"How strange," she thought. The voices in her head stopped hissing and the frenzied buzzing sounds vanished, leaving her mind bare and empty. The quiet was deafening.

Her brown eyes immediately swept over to the clock at the center of the room; it appeared to be motionless. She eyed the pendulum enclosed within the wooden case to confirm her suspicions. It came to a standstill. A lump formed at the back of her throat.

"Why did it stop?" Bella couldn't help but ask herself.

She was not even sure who was after her. A serial killer on the loose, a crazed obsessive stalker who took a liking towards her, or was it one of her grandfather's adversaries who sought revenge?

Peter's quaint, modest study was replaced with inescapable nothingness – the void of silence. The absence of sound consumed all that it touched, only to be broken by noise which could shatter it like glass.

Bella's ragged breaths and the beating of her unsteady heart were the only indication of life to break the deafness. She did not think this was much of a consolation though.

Her shaking hands fumbled for her grandfather's old revolver inside his desk drawer. Bella was positive that Peter was not aware she knew of the gun he kept in his study. A tiny surge of determination coursed through her veins as she loaded the bullets into the chamber – her grandfather also didn't know she knew how to use it. Peter would have a heart attack if he found out, that is if he wasn't already dead.

She didn't know what came over her or why she chose to remain all alone in her grandparents' old house when her parents insisted on going home. All she knew for sure was that the voices in her head were driving her mad; this insanity needed to stop and she most certainly would not go down without a fight.

 ****  
** Everything started to change as soon as the darkness took over, but it was the heavy feeling in the atmosphere that made Bella deeply attuned to her senses. She felt an indescribable fear, the uneasy sensation of blackness unlike the kind that made a street look like an old-fashioned photograph.

This darkness was the type that robbed you of your best sense and replaced it with a dreadful, paralyzing horror. In this blank space, Bella sat still, her jaw clenched and her muscles tensed as every fiber in her body refused to move.

That was when she saw it or what she could make out of it in the dim room. It was an enormous shadow, monstrous in size, and it moved as though it had a mind of its own. It seemed to be attached to a figure, lurking just a few meters away from the grandfather clock. The thing moved in irregular patterns, sliding and hovering in a mechanical manner as it approached her.

Bella's skin crawled as chills chased up her spine. Her body recoiled like some instinctive, visceral impulse was telling her to move – to escape – and just get the hell out of there. Her subconscious was screaming at her now; alarm bells started ringing in her brain. There was something deeper and more primitive about this shadow's true nature.

From the blackness came noises no living thing could ever create. She heard it once more; the otherworldly voices that threatened to ruin her sanity. The sounds wound around her ears like a gentle caress, a soft whisper before it transformed into a terrible lullaby drowning her inside the nightmare.

"Have you been waiting for me, Isabella?" a male voice spoke directly against the shell of her ear. These were not the phantom voices she kept hearing inside her mind. The silky tone was clear, unwavering and determined, as soothing to the ears as dark chocolates were to the tongue. His words were so unnervingly strange and beautiful, they were like ancient Celtic runes made audible.

She froze on the spot and wondered, "H-how did he know my name?"

The shadow disappeared and the room was once again filled with illumination. Though what replaced the sensation of emptiness and trepidation was the ominous, solid dark built of a man who was standing right next to her at that very second.

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. The grandfather clock was working again as the pendulum began to swing.

Fighting off the fear that tried to consume her, Bella used every ounce of her energy to gaze at the man before her.

"W-what…" Her hands blindly searched for her revolver while she took a deep breath to steady herself for the unknown; however, as soon as her eyes met his, Bella could not help but drink in his appearance.

This man was as dangerous as he was beautiful – flawlessly and utterly beautiful. He could not be human. His bronze hair fell across his pale-skinned face and his green curious-colored eyes flashed a potent red through those haphazard strands. His face was strong and defined, it was like his features were molded from marble. He had dark brows which sloped downward in a serious expression.

A prominent jaw curved gracefully along his face and the strength of his neck emphasized his features. He was the Adonis other men paled in comparison.

"W-who are you?" Bella's mouth quivered as his brilliant green irises bore into her petrified brown ones.

"I am called by many names," the tall, handsome man replied, pausing with each of his words as he projected the most evil aura Bella ever felt, radiated inside of him. "To most, I might be known as Satan, while others call me Lucifer, but for now…." A Cheshire grin so wicked and cruel it almost did not seem to fit his perfect face. "You can just call me Edward."

"Th-the D-devil?" Bella gasped. All the air in her lungs seemed to evaporate. The severity of the situation hit her as she stared wide-eyed and motionless, while the man elegantly twirled her grandfather's missing revolver in between his fingers.

His eye color changed to a speck of red as it glinted with malice and a hysterical laugh escaped his plush lips. Bella was aware that his laughter was as captivating as it was vicious, both angelic and sadistic in nature.

"Do you honestly think I would come dressed in a red cape and pointy horns?" Edward finally answered, brought by the absurdity of the assumption. "I come as everything you have ever wished for."

"What do you want from me?" Her voice was shaking but she did not allow her conviction to waver. Bella forced herself to remember, she would not leave without a fight.

Edward stared hard at her, looking into her very soul. "It's pretty simple, really. So, I'll tell you your future," he paused. "But first, you must tell me mine."

The Devil's exquisite hands reached out to touch her, beautiful and pale against the iridescent moonlight coming from the window. His graceful fingers were long and slender as the length of his spear-shaped fingernails shone like a white radiance in contrast to the dull, old study. There was something so hypnotic and inviting about his movements.

Bella urged her willpower to stay strong. "Don't give in," she warned herself; she was ostensibly aware that no sound was coming out of her mouth and even the slightest of action couldn't induce her lips to move. She realized that her body was now paralyzed. There was nowhere to run.

The fear inside her sat quietly, eroding the person she was destined to become. It was first a contortion in her stomach, the gut-wrenching sensation of her insides twisting and turning, then it became a feeling of suffocation puppeteered by an unseen hand. Her breathing became wild – erratic – deep – and then shallow. She tried very hard to fight it, using all of her strength while her body writhed to be free or shut down completely.

Another long horrendous smile, so incredibly disturbing was now plastered on Edward's handsome face. "You can't fight the darkness when you never belonged to the light," he said to her in morbid amusement.

Invisible claws cut through Bella's body and wrapped around her brain. It choked the breath from her lungs and left her body dry, leaving her panting frantically in a desperate attempt to spare her of the agony. She bit her tongue long and hard as her mouth began to taste heavily of metal.

Black mist swirled around the edges of Bella's mind, drawing her into Edward's open arms and salty tears spilled over onto her cheeks leaving a tight, parched feeling in her throat. The Devil's claws coiled around her body like a massive serpent clutching its victim and she screamed and she screamed and she screamed, yet not once was she heard.

It was a scream that shook Bella's being and scratched her senses. The scream that by itself opened and penetrated her troubled mind, peeling off that one final layer of security that now left her vulnerable and defenseless. The blood-curling shriek that put every other thought and emotion on hold. The realness of a person overwhelmed by pain that knew no end or limit.

Bella's brown eyes were wide with horror, her mouth went rigid and open as no sound came out. Her throat burned as though thousands of razors were cutting her vocal cords and the vibrations had gotten more and more intense. Her face turned gaunt and her body immobile. Her fists clenched with blanched knuckles and her nails dug deeply into her palms, drawing trickles of blood on her hands.

And when she couldn't scream anymore. "Why me?" she mouthed to him when no words came. "W-why?" Bella couldn't control the tears that spilled forth as her vision became hazy from the unbearable pain.

The Devil tilted her chin so she could see the vacuity in his eyes. "I am here to collect what belongs to me."

His declaration instigated an unfathomable and primal emotion inside of her – something snapped within. Her brown eyes flashed with rage and animosity as if lightning struck on a portentous, jet-black night. A swirl of pent-up anger seeped into her skin; the furious bubble waiting to be popped until it burst out completely.

Bella gritted her teeth as she felt the blood boiling in her system. "Enough is enough," she said to herself while she tasted the iron in her mouth; she could not remain silent anymore. Burning wrath sizzled through her body like deadly poison, screeching and demanding to unleash itself like a dormant volcano erupting. She allowed the fury to swallow her. Pure, blind anger engulfed her sense of rationality and overcame the pain from her being.

 _What the bloody hell is wrong with everyone? Why must they respond in vague, cryptic undertones she absolutely has no clue about? Why must they all leave her in the dark? First her grandfather then now, this…_ this _Edward person – the Devil, who personified himself as everything she had ever dreamt of.  
_  
"I don't fucking know what you are talking about," Bella seethed as she tried to wiggle out of his vice grip. It felt like there were hard, iron chains that remained curled tightly around her form. "If you're just going to kill me, you should do a better job of doing it quickly."

"Feisty one, aren't you?" A wicked smirk graced Edward's succulent lips as he observed Bella trying to break free in vain.

Bella spat at him, catching him off guard.

"Don't. Ever. Do. That. Again," he growled in warning. In just a blink of an eye, Bella saw a set of unnaturally jagged, elongated teeth and razor-pointed claws before they vanished. The deadly implication reverberated heavily in the air. She was almost sure that what she witnessed was, in fact, Edward morphing back into his original form.

He lifted a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and delicately wiped the traces of blood and spit away from his immaculate face. Suddenly, it was as though hundreds of sharp, jagged knives began cutting Bella's flesh. She let out another piercing shriek from the ongoing torture, watching as it marked her body with deep, painful cuts at every angle imaginable.

"Don't test me, Isabella. My patience is wearing thin," the Devil added in an equally deadly tone. It was so unsettling to hear how a malicious voice could still sound so pleasant to the ears.

"I don't like being called Isabella." Bella responded through gritted teeth. She was fed up with everything even as she stood there, bathing in her own blood. It was a miracle her body did not give up on her and her mind was still conscious and coherent. "Just kill me already and get this over with!"

When a thought crossed her mind and hit her like a solid punch in the gut. "You killed my grandfather, didn't you? On October 31, 2001?" Her reaction just made him laugh. It was such a whimsical laughter, the mirth vibrating as though wind chimes were ringing.

"Goddammit!" Bella shouted. "Answer me, Edward!" Her nostrils flared and her breathing quickened.

Edward took a long pause, unfazed as he raised a perfect brow before he decided to answer. "He never told you, did he? About the deal he made with me so long ago?"

"What deal?" A skeptical look was evident on her face. She knew she should not trust the Devil's words; he was only going to deceive her.

"He sold his soul to me in exchange for his true heart's desire." There it was – a sickeningly long, horrendous smile which resembled a Cheshire cat appeared on his lips again.

Bella swiftly shook her head with the ludicrousness of his accusation. "You're lying! You killed him!"

Edward paid no attention to her and continued speaking as if he was retelling a tragic story. "His greatest desire was to witness and hold his only grandchild in his arms, alive and breathing." The mockery in his tone was unmistakable.

"I don't believe you! My grandfather was a good man! He would never do such a thing!"

"You were never meant to live, _Isabella_." He placed emphasis on her full name because he knew she did not like it. "I lent my heart to you and now, I am taking it back."

The last sentence made her shiver down to her very core. Her brown eyes became frozen like the surface of a winter puddle, robbing them of their usual warmth and nothing made sense anymore. Bella placed her trembling hand in front of her beating heart. The clear indication of life – the pulsating, thumping muscle… every single pound in her chest was never hers to begin with and, without it, she was going to die.

"Funny, how you've been made a fool all along. I always knew you were the independent one… the little kid who thought she could face the world on her own. The short, plain-looking girl who never relied on anyone but herself," Edward quipped. He was wholly enjoying the dismay and anguish of tearing Bella apart. "Unfortunately for you, your grandfather kept all of the relevant books and tomes about the occult and Witchcraft."

Bella spent almost half her time researching about Halloween and she realized that she never accomplished anything. It was all wasted effort. This was the night of her downfall. She already lost the stars to the darkness. The air had shifted inside the diminutive room; the feeling was heavy and sticky in spite of the chill.

The demons already came fashioned in her worst nightmares. Her grandfather had called out to the Devil to do his bidding. He tapped into the very power of the earth itself and after that night, what he unleashed could never be tamed.

"Peter summoned me on a Halloween night and years later, I took his soul on the same Sacred Day. You were a stillborn in your mother's womb – such a tiny, sickly thing. He came to me, begging when he was sure you weren't going to make it. His soul was mine the moment he called out to me." The Devil loosened his grip and the invisible claws binding Bella were gone. There was no need to torture her anymore since she lost the will to fight. Her body collapsed and she fell with a loud thud to the floor.

"Now, this is just among the many things I've bestowed upon your grandfather during the last couple of years. And well, these things don't come free. I wanted reassurance that Peter would not go back on his word and like a loyal servant he was, he presented me with a splendid offering. Someone that meant the world to him…" The Devil crouched down so he could savor the revulsion and anxiety on her face as she remained rooted to the floor. "Someone aside from you."

Bella remembered reading about this from one of the books she borrowed in the library; it was a Halloween tradition – a human sacrifice made in order to appease the Devil. "G-grandma?"

"Precisely." Edward smiled at her correct answer. "You say that you want me to kill you but in fact, you really want to live. Tell me,… what can you do for me in exchange for your life?"

Various thoughts started swirling inside her mind as the panic to make the right decisions settled upon her. Without any other option, she blurted the first thing she could think of in sheer desperation. "I-I'll offer you my soul."

"Your soul is as damaged as the absent heart from your breast." Edward's tone rose a few octaves as if he was reprimanding a small child.

Bella swallowed gravely as though the burden of the world weighed upon her shoulders. What could she offer him that he did not already take?

"Bear me a son." The Devil spoke in a way that set flames upon her feeble heart and tingled her very spine.

Bella was gobsmacked with his suggestion. Using her brain to come up with the most logical solution to persuade the monster, she hastily responded, "I-I am nothing more but a child."

"Yes, a mere child who has not even menstruated yet." The Devil scoffed at her, though the finality in his tone was already clear. "Once you reach the age of sixteen, I will claim you on the night of October 31, 2004."

 **ooOoo**

The Devil looked at Bella, his green irises glistening in the dim room. His hand reached under the hair just below her ear and his thumb caressed her cheek. Losing the ability to control her actions, she parted her lips and closed her eyes. Their breaths mingled as Edward drew his lips to hers.

His mouth was so warm while their lips crushed together. The kiss obliterated every rational thought that determined her death or her survival. A kiss like this was a beginning, a promise of much more to come. It was slow and soft, comforting in ways that words would never be. He kissed her and the world fell apart.

Though as soon as Bella opened her eyes, he was gone. She was startled by the abrupt turn of events and asked herself if she was only dreaming, but a male voice – one that was both deadly and delicious resounded in her ears to refute the uncertainties.

"I don't enjoy leaving empty-handed, Isabella. Don't keep me waiting."

Her eyes became as wide as saucers as they landed on her grandfather's revolver. It was now in her hand, the gun cold and callous against her palm. Her heart hammered wildly in her chest as she understood perfectly well what Edward commanded her to do. He wanted an offering in compensation for her life. Like Peter before her, Edward demanded someone who meant the world to her.

Bella's breathing rose and her heart continued beating erratically as her anxiety spiraled out of control. Her shaking fingers fumbled for the cellphone in her purse.

"Please," Bella silently begged. "Don't pick up." She forced her fingers to press the numbers.

"Bella?"

"M-mom. Are you and Dad home?"


End file.
